THE STORY SO FAR
In the cold darkness of a seemingly abandoned building, our heroes awoke without memory of how they got here. The room where they had ended up had a dark trail of liquid across the floor, along with a set of stairs leading upwards and a hole in the wall that led to the outside, though it was jammed with glass shards. They quickly split into two groups; one which remained in the Pit, and another which went to explore further. Upon leaving, the second group discovered a machine with a gigantic, draconic monster (henceforth referred to as a grue) coiled around it, which quickly fled and left them alone to inspect the machine.
Inside the machine, Indy, Erebos, Moxy, and Trer discovered an unconscious Fae who woke up shortly and introduced himself as Rein. After Trer and Moxy moved on, the two spirals listened to him drop vague hints about a war and promise to take them to someone named Elayr. Along the way they met Eva, a "rat" who seemed to be a younger grue, asleep on top of a skeleton. Rein mentioned that they needed to get moving lest someone catch up to them, but refused to say much more beyond the fact that it's safer to go alone. Eva went on about a similar figure who she referred to as orange.
Rein lead them to Headquarters, but then left the two dragons to face Elayr on their own. He proved to be a friendly robot with a Skydancer avatar and began to explain a bit more about this place (specifics in the "what we know" section).
Meanwhile, after a heated argument in the Pit, Taiga went off on her own. She ended up in a strange room with synthetic clouds and soil, with a number scribbled on the wall. There didn't seem to be a floor beneath all the dirt. Ailean followed after her shortly, after which another number appeared on the wall. Trer and Moxy discovered a secret passageway behind a broken mirror and joined them in the room, causing the appearance of two more numbers. Just shortly after their arrival, Taiga managed to dig through the floor and end up in some sort of garden, causing the gravity in part of the tunnel to reverse. As if on cue, the grue they'd found coiled around the machine reappeared in the hallway Trer and Moxy had come from, followed by two more of its kind. They seemed almost afraid of the mirror shards...
After some coaxing from Trer they spoke, though it was cryptic at best. One of them attacked Moxy when she stepped to protect Ailean, who had gone to grab a shard. They then fled, disappearing into a ceiling panel in the hallway. While Trer wanted to follow them in search of more answers, Ailean and Moxy seemed hesitant and tried to discuss it with him first.
Back at the Pit, the black substance spread across the floor began to churn, fume, and spread. It ended up absorbing a feather that was dropped into it, but when it touched a glass shard it spread away from the point. Kara experimentally breathed fire at it, which only caused it to shoot upwards into a centipede-esque monster with a single, orange eye. Feathers not unlike the one it had absorbed spread across its back, and it did the same to an old pipe which gave it metal plating. It almost seemed to wait for them to make a move, but eventually trapped Kara and Ratchet with an "arena" of sludge and attempted to skewer the Spiral. After some acrobatic maneuvers to distract it, Xavia tossed glass shards at it which caused it to turn to face her, putting its eye in the line of fire in the process. As soon as the shard made contact with it, it fell apart and the liquid vanished altogether. The Pit fell eerily still.
WHAT WE KNOW
-The small mirror that Rose found has the initals "LR" carved into the back of it.
-The hole that leads to the outside in the Pit is jammed with iridescent glass.
-Rein travels around in a large mech, which glows blue.
-When he first appeared, Rein's machine was broken and he was left unconscious. A grue was found coiled around it.
-At the end of the trail of black liquid from the pit is Rein's mech. It does not continue beyond that, and if the grue there was the one who left it, it did not leave any more when it ran away.
-Rein tried to apologize for something when he first woke up, but cut himself off when he realized the dragons that woke him up weren't who he thought they were.
-In the same post, he implied that someone had let him know the players were coming.
-Shards of that iridescent glass have been found in several places. Is there none of it still intact?
-Mirrors apparently let you get from place to place, but they're allegedly all broken.
-Some sort of war happened here before.
-Where the heck did Ailean's chalk come from? It definitely wasn't there before...
-Rein's only issue with taking the baby grue (Eva) along is that Elayr wouldn't like it. He doesn't seem to have a problem with them.
-There is a Skydancer in the pattern on Synthetic Sky's wall.
-The grass near Reversal Tunnel is "dreaming".
-There are always as many numbers on the wall in Synthetic Sky as there are dragons in the room, though the numbers themselves change.
-The skeleton found in the Coldzone was intact and probably did not die from one of the bombs that had obviously been there before. It was likely a Wildclaw, and while Rein was repulsed by it, Eva seemed hesitant to leave it.
-Eva expected Indy and Erebos to be someone she called "orange" who promised they would leave her alone.
-The gunk from the Pit spawned a centipede-esque monster with a single, orange eye. It was able to absorb items and incorporate them into itself.
-Glass repels grues and the centipede.
-Rein expression looked a little darker when Indy mentioned Eva's name...
-Rein mentions that someone might be looking for them (likely Etch, who Elayr mentioned later) but he can't say his name for fear that he might show up "out of spite".
-Both Rein and Elayr agree that it's safer to encounter Etch alone rather than in a group. He will show up to each dragon eventually according to Elayr.
-The trio of grues that Ailean, Trer, and Moxy encounter mention that the place they are in is "Hell" but refuse to clarify. They also claim that dragons are always too literal after Trer responds asking who begins the torture.
-There's a giant, red runestone with an odd symbol carved into it in the second realm. It has something else drawn into the dirt beneath it.
-Rein needed to leave just before entering Headquarters. Elayr states that he's been missing for a few days as well.
-Elayr is a robot who projects a holographic Skydancer to speak and display emotions. He was allegedly killed by grues, though he admits he's not sure if it actually happened or if he was simply programmed to think it did.
-Headquarters glow blue. Elayr's projection is the same way.
-He's been working ceaselessly for the past few days, and was messing with a machine when he first made his appearance.
-The grue trio states that "the bird that dirties its feathers shall fall beneath the earth" before telling the dragons to leave and then running off. They escape into a ceiling panel.
-The trio also speaks in perfect unison, though their thoughts are mostly individual.
-Killing the centipede caused all of the black liquid in the Pit to vanish.
-The creator of this place and the one who brought all of the dragons here is named Etch. He picked them because he wanted to play a game, though Elayr states that they're all playing against him rather than each other. He likens it to multiple games of chess.
-Etch is apparently of no known species (to Elayr), though he describes him as tall, upright, and having orange eyes. He wears... dragons? And other things that die here.
-Elayr does not know whether they can face Etch or not, but he has a friend named Fie who might. He hasn't seen her in a long time, though.
-Rein claimed that Sans Pith only lets dragons out "when it feels like it", though Elayr stated that you just have to think outside the box. The latter might be proven true by the fact that the only way out was discovered when Taiga dug through the ground in Synthetic Sky.
-According to Elayr, Rein knows more about the grues than he's willing to share.
-Dragons have beaten the "game" and gotten back home before, though it's not guaranteed.
GALLERY
By @
Zenara
